In a career that spans three decades, three countries and more than 30 states, Leon has managed environmental impact statements for many federal agencies on projects ranging from dams and reservoirs to coal-fired power plants, power lines, flood control projects, road expansions, management of Civil War battlefields, NASA's Kennedy Space Center operations and a proposed uranium mine on a national forest. He also has worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to develop comprehensive conservation plans at more than 40 national wildlife refuges from the Caribbean to Alaska.

While this comes as no surprise to most readers, it might be gratifying to know that it would also have been the judgment of none other than the founder of Earth Day, the late Senator and Brown's fellow Democrat Gaylord Nelson. To my knowledge, Nelson never called Brown a phony to his face. But here is what Nelson did say in 2001:

“The bigger the population gets, the more serious the problems become…. We have to address the population issue….it's phony to say ‘I'm for the environment but not for limiting immigration.’"

To hear him tell it, Brown is all for the environment; heck, he swoons over it. There he was on May 23, brandishing his lofty globalist credentials and hobnobbing with more than 500 scientists from around the world at the WEST Summit 2013. Here he and UC Berkeley professor Tony Barnosky discussed the Earth’s ecological “tipping points” – beyond which climate would destabilize and extinctions would soar.

After listening earnestly to these scientists, Brown pontificated:

“We’re in a war here in the contest of ideas. You have to reach people who are skeptical, disinterested and maybe even somewhat hostile. It will take some critical mass to first communicate the point and then create the conditions by which we can begin to make change.”

Vintage Governor Moonbeam. Mike Royko would be bemused. Royko was Chicago’s legendary syndicated columnist who, back in the 70s, first coined the term describing California’s quintessential eccentric.

Among the recommendations of a report presented to the governor at the WEST Summit was one to “slow and eventually stop world population growth, with a peak of no more than 9 billion, decreasing to less than 7 billion by 2100.” [Governor Brown: Pay Attention to Climate Change, by Claudia Cruz, May 23, 2013]

Both this report and Brown were silent on the question of California’s population growth. Apparently, this is a horse of a different color. Currently increasing at about 1% per year – considered barely adequate by shills for the state’s insatiable cheap labor and ethnic lobbies – the number of Californians will more than double to 80-90 million by 2100. Why is it that California – our most populous state by far, and already staggering under the burden of overpopulation for decades – gets a pass on a demographic target that is deemed essential for the rest of the world to be sustainable?

Because it’s politically correct, pure and simple. Environmentally incorrect, but politically correct. And political correctness, in contemporary California and America, trumps environmental correctness every time.

Favoring unlimited immigration, open borders and amnesty for illegal immigrants is the very essence of political correctness. Jerry Brown is down with that.

Delivering the commencement address to UC Berkeley’s political science graduates in late May, Brown warned his audience about the perils of climate change even as he expressed support for immigration policies that will only worsen the American response to climate change by drastically increasing the number of Americans who emit greenhouse gases.

Brown:

“…more threatening is the report that the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming – carbon dioxide – averaged 400.03 parts per million….Of course, the pace [of climate change] is very slow but inexorable and, most troubling, soon to be irreversible."

“Look how the hostility to immigrants expressed in the passage of Proposition 187 in 1994, gave way to what is now a majority in California who support immigration reform. Today, in Washington, key Republican and Democratic leaders are working to fashion real changes in our immigration laws.”

Earth Day founder Nelson:

“It's phony to say ‘I'm for the environment but not for limiting immigration.’"

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Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit membership organization that relies solely on donations. CAPS works to formulate and advance policies and programs designed to stabilize the population of California, the U.S. and the world at levels which will preserve the environment and a good quality of life for all.